The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): An Introduction
In a nutshell: there's a massive conflict inside the OSI and the OSI stooges (staff serving Big Sponsors like Microsoft) try to hide it
A DAY before yesterday we received a ton of information from informants, whistleblowers, and former insiders. Yesterday we published an introductory part and said we'd kick things off later that day or the day after (i.e. today). They say that "haste makes waste", so we've waited patiently for more clarity and completeness of supportive evidence, some of which we've saved locally (in case the OSI purges it later, i.e. in the interim or after publication) and will openly share here later this month. We'll do our best to preserve what they don't want people to see because transparency is paramount. Sunlight astonishes and kills vampires.
It seems increasingly clear that the "OSAID" openwashing is a highly sensitive subject - one involving the subpoenas in a class action case against Microsoft GitHub (and yes, that involves the Serial Strangler!). It's a case with billions of dollars at stake because it's about mass plagiarism and liability for it, even embezzlement likely implicating GitHub's CEO at the time. That Microsoft engages in "litigation tourism" is rather revealing, with censorship as the principal aim (they clearly understand that they have no "case"). It's about covering up corruption and competition crimes at Microsoft (the debt-saddled SLAPP firm might not even be aware of this), set aside actual strangulation of women [1, 2, 3].
With all that in mind, today we formally start the series about the OSI, Microsoft's front group and enabler of GPL violations (plus openwashing of proprietary chatbots, or whatever else happens to be GAFAM's agenda).
Based on this very recent blog post by a Microsoft operative (Nick Vidal), the election process at the OSI is closely controlled by hostile forces. The OSI should be considered nothing but an "occupied" organisation, led by people seeking to undermine its original goals for personal gain. A new article in FOSS Force provides an update on the Faraone scandal. To quote Hall, a former OSI insider (she had left for reasons she explained to me in private):
On Friday Open Source Initiative released the official roster of candidates for its upcoming board election. As has become the norm for the organization this decade, this election is already facing a major election irregularity. In the past, the organization has handled itself well in these cases. This time its decided to circle the wagons to defend a decision that many are saying is indefensible.What this means is that when this election is over and done, and the votes have been tallied and logged into the record books, there’s going to be an asterisk placed somewhere amid the names and numbers to denote that self-nominated Debian developer Luke Faraone wasn’t allowed to run.
OSI claims that according the rules spelled out in an email broadcast to the organization’s membership, the nomination was filed well after the filing deadline of February 17 at 11:59 pm UTC. Faraone’s camp says that according to the rules spelled out on OSI’s website, where no time zone was mentioned, he filed three hours before deadline. Farone lives in the Pacific time zone, which is also where OSI is located
There is so much more going on behind the scenes, but people aren't seeing it, not just because of self-censorship but actual censorship by the OSI.
We too have been subjected to a lot of censorship by the OSI [1, 2].
We don't know how long this series will go on for (we expect a lot of face-saving reactions from the OSI as we go along), but hopefully it can be wrapped up before this month ends. It is connected in a number of ways to a number of cases we filed against someone who abused us for over a decade [1, 2]. The deeper we dive, the worse it'll look for them. █